AUTHOR: Sarah Cove TITLE: "Engaging Reach" DATE: 1/28/2007 02:44:00 PM ----- BODY:

I read a post the other day that appeared on my Emergic RSS Feed about Mark Kingdon's claim that, in the digital world, "reaching" a consumer is only step one of the game, and not the end goal. And that measuring "engaging reach" was what should now be considered important. Questions like: "What is `engaging reach?'" and "What possibilities is the distinction bringing forth?" arose in me over time and as I had conversations with people about this. And so I started to do some research on it. I found a post from a "Marketing for IT" blog describing "engaging reach" as the next" performance metric" for advertisers to rank consumers on the Internet: "It is simply not enough to demonstrate that someone has seen your ad or responded to your content. IT advertisers want to know how long they perused your content, what they did with it once they downloaded it, who they passed it along to..." "Engaging reach" seems to be a distinction coming from people who are marketing/advertising on the Internet. And it distinguishes a set of metrics to measure how many times people "click-through" on a site, how long people stay on a site, etc. It is a way of understanding the amount of attention and time people give to a site and to certain content. I don't know what to think of this distinction. I can see that it could be a useful way for advertisers to rank certain sites, perhaps to get a better knowledge of what specific groups of customers are doing on the web, etc. But I'm too ignorant of the marketing field at this point to know what breakdowns it is trying to take care of and if this distinction is going to provide a great new deal of insight and direction for the way marketing relates to its customers or if this is just an extension of "business-as-usual." And, in this moment, I'm a little disappointed. When I first read the post and heard the distinction, I translated it into the discourse that is arising surrounding Web 2.0, social networks, and the transformative potential of distributed media, and more in particular, into the framing of Yochai Benkler's book, Wealth of Networks." (Now, I have to say that I am a beginner in this field, actually not even a beginner. I have dipped my foot into the lake and enjoyed the temperature and feel of the water. And now I am just beginning to learn to wade in the pool, in the hopes of one day being able to swim -- with which stroke, I don't yet know.) I had the following conversation: "It seems that this article might be declaring "reaching" an audience as waste. Previously, when we had centralized networks that distributed media and advertising, and people only had a choice of a several hundred different outlets to choose from, all we needed to do was saturate those channels, we would "reach" the consumer, and people would "choose" to buy our products. "Reaching" was the main concern of ours. Now that our customers have millions of choices about where to get their media, and many people on the Internet are moving in the space oriented to specific concerns, we can't just be tranquilized with getting information out there. We need to build products, conversations, and services that deal with our customers in fundamentally different ways. And questions that open up this "engaging reach" could be: Who are these people as customers? In this new digital networked space, it seems that we are interacting with individuals who are moving about the space with a set of concerns. What are those concerns? What are concerns? How can we better understand them, and understand ourselves as a means of taking care of our customers' concerns." And, as I write, something new comes to me. Even though I was disappointed that my above conversation was not the conversation happening between those discussing "engaging reach", I noticed something even more interesting. That in reading about "engaging reach," I had been blindly and arrogantly translating the words of this discourse to fit into the world I am creating. And my criminal act was that I didn't know I was doing this. This indiscriminate behavior is something I have seen happening in many conversations that people, including myself, have. It is an isolating behavior, tranquilizing people to stay within the worlds and discourses that they/I are/am and to become even more comfortable in their bubble. So this blog, as an assignment to grow, led me somewhere very different from where I had anticipated it going. Instead of gaining some "truth" about a distinction, I glimpsed a fundamental part of who I am in this moment.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Sarah Cove TITLE: A Networked Physician Community DATE: 1/25/2007 02:48:00 PM ----- BODY:

I read today from the Health Care Blog about an interesting new community forming to deal with a breakdown rising among pharmaceutical drugs and their side-effects. According to the article, some doctors have complained that it takes the FDA and pharmaceutical companies too long to reveal serious drug reactions and have formed their own on-line networked organization to resolve this breakdown. As a means of building trust credibility to their assessments, all the doctors have to give their real names when discussing on the community and are re-validated by the site each time they log in. I am not competent to determine what breakdowns could arise from this sort of community, but I find it an interesting example of how the new Internet capabilities are transforming the way people can network with each other to enrich their assessments and their capacitites become those of the collective. This community is a marginal-cost means of gathering knowledge (assessments of physicians) as decribed in Yochai Benkler's book, The Wealth of Networks

----- -------- AUTHOR: Sarah Cove TITLE: Who are physicians in the ontological design discourse? DATE: 1/25/2007 02:37:00 PM ----- BODY:

This post is a speculative discussion that I am opening up. Not all of my story will be accurate, and what I am writing comes from a non-rigorous history I have of doctors. I'm not quite sure where these distinctions will take me, if they will be useful or not, but Who a physician is has changed over time as the world has become more networked and new wastes and opportunities have been declared. From a single town physician who fixed bones, delivered babies, and diagnosed diseases, to someone who focuses on cutting costs I am speculating that physicians are understood by their customers as providers of a service, which is a promise to effectively diagnose bodily symptoms and solve these symptoms. People go to doctors to get better and expect to get better, or they say they have a bad doctor and go to someone else. Now this might not be how everyone understands physicians or how physicians understand themselves, especially when complicated problems come in to play, like cancer or alzheimers. Also, this distinction, and who a doctor's customer is, is made more complicated with the administrative aspects of medicine brought on by HMOs, etc. Who is the customer of the doctor today compared to who it was previously. If you have any thoughts, and would like to help me construct a story about what a physician is today, please comment.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Sarah Cove TITLE: Renewable Energy Options DATE: 8/20/2006 09:53:00 PM ----- BODY:

For those of you who are interested in learning more about the different types of renewable energy out there, visit www.renewableenergyaccess.co, site by clicking here.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Sarah Cove TITLE: Hurray for the ACLU DATE: 8/17/2006 09:51:00 PM ----- BODY:

Hoping the courts don't overrule this. Read this article from at Lycos News. You can read Judge Taylor's ruling here.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Sarah Cove TITLE: The Immigration Issue DATE: 4/11/2006 11:20:00 PM ----- BODY:

So, I was listening to Fox News tonight (listening meaning being in another room while a roommate watched the TV) and what other issue was on but the Illegal Immigration Bill. There was a woman on the TV who was pro kicking out illegal immigrants. Her story went something like this, "We cannot sit by while people come into the United States on their own terms. We have laws and it is not okay to sit by as these people disregard them all...that is not what America is about . America is a country where immigrants come into the country, integrate themselves into the culture and learn to speak the language..." And as this was being said my muscles tensed and the following conversation happened: "Lady, really you don't care about the illegality or legality of people coming into the US or about people following the rules. Sure you spout it vehemently but who cares. You don't. That is just a politically correct, boring story to hide a more vile one. What is the much more interesting story for you and what triggers you is the story of "invasion." And by "invasion," I mean a large group of people coming into a culture and making changes to the way of life, the culture, the language. It is the same fucking story as with the Irish immigrants and Italians immigrants: `those bloody Catholics coming in and polluting our religion and over-populating with their large families. They live in burroughs and don't integrate and how in God's name will we preserve our WASP way of life?' It is the same racism, driven by the fear of losing one's culture or what is comfortable." "But now, the conservatives have a nice twist--legality--which hides and, at the same time, makes more present, their racism. `We are doing it for the greater good of the country, saving it from people that have not got a right to be here,' is a much tastier story for conservatives to swallow than, `I, a person with strong racist inclinations, don't want dirty people from below the border to bring their filthy, non-English-speaking bodies here.'" Let's get some word printed out there about what is really happening, people's anger and racism boiling underneath all of this and driving it every bit of the way. And, I think almost every American has this story. Hey, I have recognized it in me at times. In my lifetime, 1/4 of the people in the US will be Latinos. And that story has every so often scared me since high school or early college. But I recognize it as a bullshit story that can trap me into a rigid and intolerant way of being. I think liberals should be more aware of that story in them and conservatives that live in it should stop trying to hide it. They should think about the stories driving their concerns versus the bullshit stories of legality, and see if those are the stories they want America to bring proudly forth into the future.

----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: guillermo m wechsler DATE:5/18/2006 01:05:00 PM ...mexican walking under the moon and over the desert are triggering interesting questions about legality, justice, and multiculturalism. overall, in my heart, i would like to have just one america for all of us. it is a huge challenge to learn from each other, and to create the ethical space in which diverty can thrive...the media debate seems to be shallow and uninspiring...and most of the audience do not distinguish what is legal, from what is moral, from what is ethical...should we talk about it? ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Sarah Cove DATE:8/25/2006 12:20:00 AM How does one create an ethical space we can all share as a country when our country is founded on the freedom of speech? And how do we deal with the collision of freedom of speech and intolerance? I have a lot of questions around this, but this area is new to me and I don't know how to articulate these questions. I'm blindly being American but not understanding all the ways that is making me in the world. ----- -------- AUTHOR: Sarah Cove TITLE: Book Suggestion #1 DATE: 3/28/2006 11:10:00 PM ----- BODY:

So, I am not able to write a long post tonight, but I wanted to suggest that anyone interested, including myself, read a book by a "post"-neoconservative writer, Francis Fukuyama. By "post," I mean he no longer considers himself to be interested in where the neoconservative movement is going, but he didn't "turn" liberal either. (Apologies if this is a poor and inaccurate interpretation of his position. I will read more about it and clarify this later this week.) The book is called "America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservatice Legacy" and is a book about the neoconservative movement from a perspective probably many of us don't get much of. If you are interested in reading and discussing it with me, let me know via this blog, e-mail, cell phone, face-to-face conversation, telepathy, or smoke signals. Unfortunately, Morse Code will not work as I never learned the --..s.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Sarah Cove TITLE: Liberals as storytellers DATE: 3/27/2006 09:09:00 PM ----- BODY:

All of these conversations I have been having avec moi have led me back to us as liberals living in a world of stories, dominant and marginal. Right now, the liberal story is weak. It doesn't seem to be marginal or emerging in this country, but dying. We need to become good and powerful storytellers and understand the tools available to us for this and practices we need to build to become the Tolstoys and Spielbergs of the 21st century. And not only do we need to become good storytellers. But we need good stories. Where would Bill Cosby be without his Fat Albert skit or FDR without the "New Deal." Any writers out there (ahem...Jennie?) that know how to write good stories?

----- -------- AUTHOR: Sarah Cove TITLE: The "dominant" storyteller of the future DATE: 3/24/2006 04:17:00 PM ----- BODY:

Is the internet opening up a space for more marginal stories to exist or just increasing the rate at which story emergence and "domination" happens? Or is it just changing the game of story telling? Certain stories that emerge on the Internet will remain marginal, others will dominate, but will there be any pattern to this? Will the means of domination (if you have the dominant story, you dominate worlds) 30 years from now be different? Will strong stories no longer emerge from the government or scientists or the Vatican but from the Internet? And will those who understand this capacity of the Internet dominate? Domination (and I'm not sure I like that word, but can't think of what else to use and don't want to lose my train of thought) came previous from the navy or firearms. In the future, will it appear in the digital space? And what if stories which I dislike or which frighten me (like intelligent design or anti-Semitism) sominate? Who will be the dominant storytellers of the future? How can people prepare to tell their stories in the future?

----- -------- AUTHOR: Sarah Cove TITLE: Storytellers DATE: 3/23/2006 01:36:00 PM ----- BODY:

Does anyone know anything about storytellers and what good ones do to bring people into their world? This could include film writers or short story writers (Jennie?) or Native American oral storytellers. What makes a good story?

----- -------- AUTHOR: Sarah Cove TITLE: My scientific reaction DATE: 3/23/2006 01:35:00 PM ----- BODY:

I wanted to mention something more about my reading of the physicist's scientific analysis of the WTC collapse in 2001 (see my post of 03/22/06. What I find interesting, but not surprising, was my reaction to the story. As I was reading his argument that the molten metal found in the rubble of the trade towers could not have been created by just the jetplane fuel, (which he backed up with chemical equations and assertions about the melting point of steel), I started to nod my head. I have had some scientific training and my body likes scientific explanations. Science, for me holds a trump card over other stories, something I'm working to become more conscious of. Science has not always been a powerful storyteller (by that I mean something/someone bringing stories that people listen to "enthralled" without questioning, or that the stories and background of stories are so powerful that they happen automatically in a large number of people, such as science and me). Religion used to be the storyteller that trumped all other stories and that was the automatic story out of which people lived their lives. Now science has a similar status in large parts of the world. And you can see conflicts in the mixture of science and religion as the dominant storyteller in the States with intelligent design, and I'd imagine in the Middle East although I don't know of any examples. When and how did science gain power as a storyteller, producing people like me who will listen to a scientific analysis and say, "Ah ha. There you go. Proof." And how do/can two major stories exist in one culture? Can science and religion both exist together for a significant amount of time? And how can a person living in both stories approach the world? For me, I know I have always had problems with religion because I want "proof" of what people take on faith. And in any arguments about religion or ethics, I have tried and failed to trump people with the science card. But I'm not sure I can do this anymore. Science and religion are stories with such different ways of being in the world that perhaps they can't interact--oil and water.

----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Unknown DATE:5/29/2006 10:32:00 AM Science and religion can co-exist because they express two distinct realms of existence: Science attempts to understand, explain, and predict the physical world, while religion attempts to understand, explain, and predict the non-physical world. Science asks questions that have empirical and quantifiable answers, "Given State A, at time T1, what will be the quantifiable characteristics of State B at time T2?" Religion asks questions that cannot be explained in quantifiable terms, e.g. "Why is there something instead of nothing?"

Conflict arises when either Science or Religion steps outside of its bounds, i.e. when Science asks questions that cannot be materialistically quantified or scientifically catagorized, or when Religion asks questions that deal with quantifiable physical phenomena.

Example of Science over-stepping its bounds: Nazi Germany used a Darwinian justification for its actions. The theory was that Nations/Races were fundamental biological units, and they believed that according to Darwin, each biological unit is programmed to survive at all costs, and only the most fit shall remain. Thus, they had a mandate founded on scientific law to exterminate biological competition, other races and other nations, to make room for the Nazi biological unit to grow, and in this proceses, they would be established as the most fit, and thus, most deserving of survival. Obviously, the Nazis over-stretched Science here. Races and Nations are not biologically based groups, they are social constructs. Natural selection is also very complex. The Nazis did not take into account the fact that the Human Species (which is a biological unit striving for survival) is more likely to survive and thrive when working cooperatively with other other humans (and most likely, when working in harmony with our environment as a whole) instead of killing each other.

Example of Religion over-stepping its jurisdiction: Using Creationism to fight Evolutionary Theory. Creationism tells us that God created the world, in such and such way, giving us what we have today. Evolutionary Theory is based on scientific, quantifiable evidence, and using that evidence, a theory of heredity, natural selection, etc, has been established. They do not contradict each other because Science only tells us that Evolutionary Theory explains the physical evidence, but makes no attempt at settling whether God planted that evidence in an intentional fashion or if that evidence arrived by some other vehicle. Further, Science never says "This explaination exists, thus, there can be no other explaination," it only says "This is the current explaination that is based on our current quantifiable, verifiable, repeatable data."

When Religion does battle with Science, everybody loses, because it only shows that someone is using flawed reasoning in order to justify aggresive behavior.

~losrivas ----- -------- AUTHOR: Sarah Cove TITLE: The Internet as the Brothers Grimm of today DATE: 3/22/2006 09:40:00 PM ----- BODY:

So my friend John, sent me links to two sites. They were http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html and www.911Truth.org. The first site is a physicist who uses scientific analysis to question the story that the government gave about the fires in the WTC being the cause of the collapse. And the latter site's mission is to "investigate, unearth, and widely publicize the full truth surrounding September 11th, 2001." These two sites could be labeled as "conspiracy theory" sites. But what makes a conspiracy theory? And how is that changing with the Internet? In my current understanding, I would categorize conspiracy theories as stories which counter the story given by a government (or other offficial and powerful network) but either have no assertions to back them up and/or no power to bring the story into the mainstream. Perhaps there will never be a "full" concensus about what happened on 9/11. Perhaps this will be another JFK assassination, with conversations about conspiracy theories still happening 30 years into the future. But how does the internet and global communication affect this? Marginal stories have a space to live and breathe on the Internet that wasn't available to them before. You can find countless stories about everything and anything on the Internet. Two hundred years ago, the Brothers Grimm collected over 200 German tales, which was a huge accomplishment in that day. Now the Internet does not "collect" stories, it "receives" them. And there are about about 7 or 8 powers of 10 more stories now, the number growing continuously. And so the marginal "conspiracy theories" have a space to live. Will they be able to gain power, even without assertions? How has story-telling changed with the internet now? How will it change in the future? How can/will one person's story become the Snow White of the future? I'd like to keep these questions open right now and have conversations with those interested about them. One thing I'd like to add, which is connected to all of the above but from a different direction, is the story about the Tiananmen Massacre. For most people in the world, Tiananmen in 1989 was a visual display of the Chinese government as a dangerous fascist military force that would kill its own people to maintain power and "tranquility." When I was in Southern China, a friend talked to me about how he remembers it happening as he was a high school student at the time, but that none of my students were being taught about the event. Many of these kids had not been born or were a couple of years old when the event happened. Their generation might be the one that loses that story and, to them, "The Tiananmen Massacre" will be a "conspiracy theory." This happens all the time, sometimes on smaller scales, and sometimes larger. One story gains control in a "power struggle" and pushes all other stories to the margins or to extinction. Sir Isaac Newton's story about physics as "absolutes" was displaced by Einstein's story about "relativity." The local "religions" of many people throughout the world was displaced by Christianity or Islam. My story about the correct way to hang a toilet paper roll DISPLACED Tony's story (which was, increduously, that it didn't matter). I'm not clear about what questions come to me right now about this resolution and "mainstreaming" of stories, but leave that space open as well. How will patterns of the past appear in the future and in the emerging technologies?

----- -------- AUTHOR: Sarah Cove TITLE: Designing the Conversations of this Blog DATE: 2/25/2006 12:09:00 AM ----- BODY:

Hey everyone, So I had two things in mind when I asked that we do a day of blogging. The first was to organize the logistical roles and responsibilities of this community (including how to expand this blog and bring in more people, both young and old, activist and academic). The second was to set up a plan for researching/learning in this community. The roles that I and others have brought forward for the short and long term are the following: 1. A technical/visual designer of the blog. 2. A designer of the kinds, and structures, of conversations and roles in this community in order to build the best space for thinking and working. 3. People/Groups for thinking about questions and writing on them. 4. Designers/researchers of building intellectual property rights in this space. 5. Mentors and academics for guiding us in research, reviewing/editing our work, doing their own work with us or on their own 6. Someone in charge of coordinating the invitation of these mentors/intellectuals 7. Someone to manage the commitments we make, keep us on track, and handle breakdowns when they occur. 8. Others to plan the strategic future of this community in both the political world as well as the blog atmosphere (making connections with networks of bloggers/politicians, building value for these communities, etc.). I think an important conversation to have today is what are our time/people resources and which areas would we like to invest in during the short-term. Then, which areas which should explore and build in 3/6/9 months. The second part is what a lot of you have sent e-mails to me about or have called me about. What topics to research and think about? I think we should discuss this and build a space which deals with a lot of people's concerns and interests. Also, we should have a conversation about what we should research in the short-, mid-, and long term and how the conversations/groups should be designed. I would like to, by the end of today, have some commitments in place for moving forward so we can start working. I would also like to make clear that I have two roles in this conversation. One is as the administrator of this conversation (setting up the context for it in this blog and perhaps mediating/directing later on). This is not a role I will always necessarily have but have taken on for right now. The second is that I am a blogger in this community who wants to change the way things are in the political world today and who has my own opinions about what I want to do to get there. I am making this clear because I want this space to be open to everyone and not for everything to be decided by me (or have people feel that way). I'm not sure I addressed all the concerns I have heard from people, and if I left you out, post away.

----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Sarah Cove DATE:2/25/2006 01:40:00 AM What I am about to propose as to where we start interests me in two ways: one is that I believe in order to make a substantial difference in the political world today, we need to explore the context and foundation out of which our political system is based and to find the cracks, fissures, and breaks and repair them there. The second thing is that I think what I propose can provide us with many interesting questions for a long time, can entice intellectuals to come in and think with us, and involves a lot of the questions and directions in which people I have talked to in this group want to go.


The way I see it, the 21st century is bringing with it a lot of new problems and opportunities that we haven't yet imagined. It is one where we will be coordinating globally in almost every aspect of our daily lives. The boundaries of enemies and allies will not be as clear (consider the eastern seaports being owned by the UAE). Technology will change the boundaries of what we consider "reality" (starting to be seen with video games and survivor shows). We will be confronting, in what I consider a terrifying way, the natural world that supports us. The list continues.

Our political system is based on structures from the 17th-18th century, a very different world than today. In order to produce substantial change to deal with the new world coming, we need to completely rebuild the foundation on what our political system rests. And, as all change is part of a historical discourse, I would like to explore how the change we want to bring is historical before bringing it. I think we can then begin to understand what concerns we will be facing in this coming century and begin to change the progressive side to deal with them.

In order to do this, I suggest that we do the following:

1. Write/dream/question about what the 21st century will be like and what our ideal political system/politician will be. I would like to, for a while, leave as open as possible the question of "What will be politics of the 21st century?" In doing this, interesting things will want to explore will appear.

(For instance, Tony and I were talking tonight about our government's promises to those who are no longer able to make valuable offers in our society [homeless, prisoners...]. How does our political system see these people and what breakdowns arise with this? What is our government's responsibility to its people? Who are considered "its people?" What is the boundary of ethics? Is there one? Who has written about this that can help us think? Etc.)

2. Form reading groups around different topics and questions that arise from [1.] (depending on interests and the number of people). I think it would be interesting for everyone to think about what politics is. Who created that distinction? What concerns was he trying to address with that distinction? What is Hobbes' distinction? Mill's? Rousseau's? Etc. What different opportunities does each distinction show? What breakdowns does it produce? What is politics for us today? What are the breakdowns? It can bring a context to everything else we will explore.

We can then form groups and look at the environmental/ecological discourse; the discourse of peace/war/relations between nations; that of technology; etc. I don't yet know what the different groups will be but I think it would be important to have the unifying question we are dealing with to be "What is politics of the 21st century?"


These are my ideas right now. What do you think? What do you like or not like? Do you have a completely different proposal? What is it?


I would like to also say that I mentioned this community to my boss, Guillermo Wechsler, and asked him to be a mentor for the group. He was very interested. He would be a great resource for us to talk to if we get stuck and need someone to think with, or if we need direction to certain authors, fields, etc.

To give you some background, Guillermo is from Chile and his background is in economics and philosophy. He works in a field called Ontological Design which is built from two main traditions: existential phenomenology (Heidegger, some Nietzsche, Foucault...) and legalistic language (Richter, John L. Austin, Wittgenstein...). To find out some more about his work, the best place I can think to send you is thedesigncommunity.net. To let you know, I don't see it as a site designed to answer all your questions but instead to produce more.

Okay. Bedtime for me. Hasta manana. ----- -------- AUTHOR: Sarah Cove TITLE: DATE: 2/21/2006 09:24:00 PM ----- BODY:

Hey everyone, So right now, I have a problem. And it is partially caused by me. It is that there are a lot of private conversations happening and no action taking place. I think part of the problem is there has not yet been a space where everyone can voice their concerns, suggestions, offers, requests, etc. and get responses in a relatively immediate time. Also, without this first conversation, we cannot produce action in this community. Now, since we have many people in this conversation, from the currently not-so-sunny state of CA to the even less-so-sunny continent of Europe, finding one time when people can meet online will be practically impossible and probably a lot of my time I could spend elsewhere. What I suggest is that this Saturday (from 9 am Parisian time/3amEST/12amPST) for 24 hours, we open a post in which people bring forward their concerns, suggestions, where they will take action, etc. We then will see on Sunday where things stand. At that point, people will start working in certain directions and we can meet again at another moment to see what has been completed, where we are having problems, where something new and interesting has come up, etc. So I will give you, let's say, oh...24 hours to let me know if this time is horrific for you. Tomorrow night, I will let you know whether it's a go or not.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Sarah Cove TITLE: DATE: 2/18/2006 03:04:00 AM ----- BODY:

Some conversations I suggest we have to set this up: 1. What are our goals? Do we want to limit ourselves to certain areas of research or not? 2. What are the roles and responsibilities of different people in this group? 3. How do we want to build our reputation in the blogging/intellectual/media/political world? 4. I suggest we start off with one project, following through to a paper and then redesign our structure to improve any problems. Yes? No? Anything else?

----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Adam DATE:2/20/2006 10:03:00 PM Check out www.tpmcafe.com.

I think what you're describing is in that vein -- except you're interested in getting grassroots participation from the college age and twentysomething crowd?

Adam ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Adam DATE:2/20/2006 10:48:00 PM This comment has been removed by a blog administrator. ----- -------- AUTHOR: Sarah Cove TITLE: DATE: 2/18/2006 03:02:00 AM ----- BODY:

Question about posting: Does anyone know how to allow everyone to start a post on this blog? Does the service allow it? If not, is there a free site that allows all members of the blog to post? Shows how unfamiliar I am with blogging.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Sarah Cove TITLE: DATE: 2/17/2006 08:24:00 PM ----- BODY:

This blog is my first suggestion of how to set-up this community. (I think all conversations in this community should happen in a blog format; it will allow all work we do to be transparent to the group and, I think, will make opportunities and breakdowns easier to spot.) I would like to have this initial post be where anyone interested give his or her name and, if he or she wants to, give roles that interest him/her, and offer any suggestions or comments. There will be people of different roles in this think tank. Here are the ones I can think of right now but let me know if there are others. 1. Some people will be involved in the technical/ visual design work of the blog. 2. Some to design the kinds, and structures, of conversations and roles in this community in order to build the best space for thinking and working. 3. Some to post blogs and form groups around researching either specific questions or examining the background out of which liberal political/social thought and action is based. 4. Some to design and build intellectual property rights in this space (which might not be necessary now, but might be interesting for both our own reputations as well as in bringing academics into the conversation). 5. People within this community as reviewers of work? (This I’m not sure about. It might be superfluous, stifling, or ineffective.) 6. Perhaps others to invite intellectuals, etc. to either work with us on specific projects, review our work, or do research of their own. 7. Some to watch the entire process, keeping people on task with the commitments they have made and looking for breakdowns that needed to be resolved. Also, this role might be a good one to look for ways in which the network amongst all of us can be built and strengthened. 8. Others to plan the strategic future of this community in both the political world as well as the blog atmosphere. Again, if this interests you, comment with your name and maybe an area you could commit to doing work in. If you want to give a quick introduction of who you are, what you do, and perhaps why this interests you, that would be useful to see what kinds of talents and interests we have available to us. For right now, I will try to organize the start-up of this group, but later will probably want to give this organizing role to someone else or to a group of people. However, if for right now you would like to help me get this off the ground, please let me know. That’s all I have for right now. What do you think?

----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Sarah Cove DATE:2/18/2006 02:59:00 AM Thanks Lilia. I will look into these networking/learning possibilities over the weekend. Noah, could you help me?

(Side note: Thanks Edie and Lilia for the Young Dem forum on Thurs. Markos was great and was the final push in getting this going.)

I think money and time can be obstacles, especially for those without any. Being that some of us are going to be spending the next 9 months organizing the state of CA while others prepare for the bar, time is an issue. But it seems that there never has been and there never will be enough time. But I think some of the assets we bring to this are that we are all working/studying in very diverse fields and can bring what we are doing to the table. Also, most of us spend some, if not all, of our free time thinking and talking about politics. Why not spend that time in a network of action?

In terms of dough, we have none. *long sigh* But the possibility I see for us right now is not in financial capital (at least not right a way) but in identity or reputation capital. If we can build this form of capital, we can bring in financial capital (in the form of grants...). I think one of the first roads we need to develop is in building the reputation capital. Without it, we will be just another set of unrecognized voices on the left. I'm thinking that the best way to build this would be with bringing in something like advisors. This could bring authority to the work we do. One problem is right now, we can't pay them. But we could offer them the position of co-author (or something of the sort) on the papers we produce. Anyone else have any ideas on how to bring this capital? ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Anonymous DATE:2/18/2006 10:40:00 AM so is this project open to those of us who are neither organizing ca nor studying for the bar?
i like this idea, sarah, mostly because i miss sitting around a table in beckett's and talking with all of you about politics.
i would like to hear more about your (or anyone's) thoughts on structure. most right-wing grassroots organizing is issue-based (i.e. abortion). it's a successfull model, but is it one we want to follow?
i think another role we might want to fill is making connections with other progressive bloggers/websites. one of my friends from high school has a moderately successful blog that has gotten some attention at the chronicle and other places.
if you email me your blogger username and password (mari.schimmer@gmail.com) i'll poke around and see if we can set this up for multiple users. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Sarah Cove DATE:2/18/2006 10:51:00 AM Mari,

Do you have any ideas on why issue-based planning is successful for them? What are the advantages/disadvantages? In thinking about the structure, perhaps we should also talk about how, in the long run, we would like to interact with the liberal world. Do we know people who could help us think in this area?

Also, thanks for the additional role. I think that would be very important.

Now, Ms. Mari Mac Mac Mac, I have sent you my username and password. Connected with it is my reputation on multiple sites. Should I be worried? ;-) Mwa. ----- --------